Last Friday's public pie fight was a phenomenal, messy success. This reporter (above) got hit hard, it seems, or added more cream to her camera-ready face for the cameras. We're sorry we missed this, but again, as we used to whine in elementary school to avoid any water-balloon mayhem or recreational sporting activity, "Don't! Dude, our mom's going to kill us if we get our clothes dirty." Laughing Squid has an brilliant comment commencing... more ›

John Vanderslice is someone you can truly count on. Aside from his incredible talent, we're always impressed with his indie rock work ethic. He keeps his studio Tiny Telephone open as an incubator for top quality recordings, he's always good for a genuine smile and a hug when we run into him, and about once every 18 months or so he releases another incredible album through Seattle-based indie Barsuk Records. His latest release Emerald City offers a somewhat gentler take on his always-unique melodies and music and a move towards even more intricate and adventurous lyrics. In the first song alone, he sings about the kookaburra tree, frangipane, bundestag and terabytes. He builds and inhabits fantastical tales and delivers them in such a convincing way as to make you believe he lived through them. In honor of John playing a free show at Amoeba Records at 2pm on Saturday, we're giving away a copy of Emerald City to two lucky winners. Listen to "White Dove" and enter to win. (Contest ends 8/14; winner will be notified via email.) more ›

There's a lot to love about the Tadich Grill, that venerable San Francisco institution. We've eaten there many times before, and there are some things some folks don't get about it that we appreciate. We're not crazy about the cost -- 1849 cuisine, and we're low on gold nuggets. But please indulge us as we share some of the finer points of the Tadich experience, which ultimately make an occasional visit well worth it. more ›

Anyone who's ridden Muni in the middle of a weekday is quite familiar with this scenario. As your bus pulls up to it's stop, you see a dozen or two school kids anxiously waiting to step up and embark Muni. You and your fellow passengers groan and brace yourselves for the ensuing chaos. (Mind you, we enjoy the company of kids but not groups of them in enclosed spaces.) Last Friday morning was our most recent encounter of this kind, and we were inspired to compile all of our of "gangs of kids" on Muni memories. Feel free to share your kid/Muni invasion experiences in the comments! Friday's ride played out like this: We were riding the 49 along Van Ness, when we were soon invaded by about ten to fifteen 10/11-year-olds. Although we were at the back of the double-bus with no vantage point of the stop, we had a bit of a warning about this invasion when the bus, in the process of pulling up to the stop, was met by the collective, high-pitched screams of several young girls. We were like, oh no, did one of them get run over? Luckily not—they were just excited about the novelty of riding Muni. And maybe the driver looked like Justin Timberlake or Usher? (We can't exactly remember what our driver looked like, but we think he probably looked more like Pat Morita. And by the way, who are the tweens loving these days, anyway?) About six of these said young girls decided to all congregate in the middle, bendy part of the bus, so that they could scream every time they lost their balance, while at the same time blocking the railings for passengers attempting to get past them. We're not sure which was worse—the prepubescents' ear-piercing screams or the ear-piercing yells of their teenaged chaperones behind us who were telling them to quit screaming. One of the "chaperones" also loudly said, "I'm sure these people didn't pay to hear you scream." And we thought to ourselves, "We didn't pay to hear you scream about their screaming either," but we all know it's more than likely futile to try to communicate with power-hungry teenagers on Muni. Luckily, we soon found ourselved getting off at City Hall to buy our Fast Pass with our first commuter check at Room 140. (Until we remembered that security checks your bags at City Hall, and we had two-days worth of dirty yoga clothes stuffed in ours. Yuck.) More kids invade Muni after the jump! more ›

Last Friday, the Examiner got their hands on a bunch of statistics and a calculator and crunched a whole bunch of numbers about crime in the city. Their verdict is that curiously, the number of homicides has gone up but the number of people arrested for said homicides has gone down. It doesn't take a math major to realize that's not very good. more ›

That long-talked about Bus Rapid Transit system that was someday to go in effect on Geary Street is finally in effect. Kick off date was last Thursday. more ›

Last Friday, your East Bay Correspondent left the confines of her designated area to witness a rare spectacle - a Bay Area performance by Survival Research Labs. which took place in San Jose as part of the ISEA festival. This was the first large-scale (i.e. includes fire) public Bay Area SRL show in approximately 10 years. more ›

Last Friday night, Kathy Griffin, star of the Bravo reality show "My Life on the D-List" and heir apparent to the Sandra Bernhard/Joan Rivers style of snark and dish comedy -- without the singing and the dead husband -- brought down house at the Warfield with her second sold-out San Francisco show.

Onstage doing standup, Griffin is energetic and totally comfortable, with a loosely structured conversational routine that could seemingly go on forever. Her Robin Williams-like manic energy leads the audience on a frenetic, often disjointed, but always piercingly funny walkabout through American pop culture.

Last Friday was an historic night in California combat sports history, as the first ever sanctioned Mixed Martial Arts competition was held in San Jose's packed-to-the roof HP Pavilion. Anticipated since the establishment of the Ultimate Fighting Championships in 1993, the Strikeforce competition marks a landmark moment of legitimacy in a frequently misunderstood sport. more ›

Last Friday, a performance art piece went bad -- and we don't just mean because it failed to critically explore the (mis)/dissemination of the capitalist hegemony: Novato performance artist Joe Canada promised to give $10 away to every homeless person who met him on the plaza in the Civic Center at 4 p.m. in the afternoon on Friday. A similar giveaway on Wednesday and Thursday had gone without incident, and buzz was no doubt building among the community. First of all, Canada was an hour late, and the 500 people in attendance, some of whom had been waiting since noon, were starting to grow a little discontent. Canada then showed up at 5, gave a bunch of rambling speeches about art, religion, and politics, and then after an hour passed, he fled the scene, jumped in his van, and drove away, without giving the attendees the $10 he'd promised. Dude! One attendee said he knew there was going to be trouble as the wind picked up and the sun started to set. "I knew when it got darker, there was less of a chance that the money would come," said attendee Rodney Brown. As Canada drove away, the crowd began yelling and cursing, and the remainder of Canada's staff tried desperately to calm folks down. As one man, Brian Boykin, put it, "This is messed up. That whole time we sat listening to him, thinking we would get money -- and then nothing." You know, that's a great NEA grant proposal, though: "I am requesting $10,000 to fund my project, which will be to promise to give money away to the homeless and then not do it." You know the Bush administration would be all over that! more ›

Everybody may or may not hate Chris Daly, but we all agree -- everybody looooooves little Jack! Your Junkie's Best Celebrity of 2005, resplendent in his orange Che Guevara onesie, graciously received guests and some indulgent knee-bouncing as his hard-working daddy mixed drinks on a bar that might just very well be the very same desk at which he pens his blistering e-missives to Mayor (and constituent?) Gavin Newsom. Last Friday, Chris Daly's office hosted an opening party for their ongoing art exhibition of Mark Ellinger's photographs of Tenderloin and SoMA SROs. (The picture at the right is "Forgotten," from the exhibition.) Of course we stopped by -- dragging SFist Eve along with us! As we arrived, those in the know informed us that we had just missed Daly throwing Luke Thomas from the Sentinel out of the party -- but the bouncer/bartender/host seemed in a remarkably good mood when we saw him, greeting constituents and mixing up martinis and bourbon-based drinks like a pro. And extra style points for the keg in the corner -- when we saw it, we noticed ourselves reflexively crouching down into our trademark pre-headstand stance. Man, it's been how long since college? A framed copy of the SF Weekly's "Worst Local Politician" award, a list of the books on Daly's shelf, and action photos of District 6's finest mixing a drink to order, after the jump! Picture by Mark Ellinger. The show is ongoing in Daly's office through this month in City Hall Room 273. more ›

's aspirations are so very mighty, and so very strange, and so utterly unattained. Good grief, it sounds like we're writing its epitaph. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, as Ms. O.N.J.'s masterpiece is as alive and shimmery today as it was when first spewed forth. It was no surprise to us that the Castro theater was completely packed -- literally not one empty seat -- last Friday night as part of the theater's "MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS" film series. And when Olivia sang that dreary "Suspended in Time" song, the entire audience whipped out their cellphones, gleefully swaying the lit screens like electronic lighters. Ahhhhhh...good times. more ›

Complaining about cell phones..what's next, airplane food? We know. But this really pisses us off. more ›

Last Friday, San Francisco Municipal Railway Chief Michael "Montgomery" Burns announced that he was leaving MUNI to take over as the head of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. Although everyone is claiming that Burns is leaving for the benjamins (if you're wondering what running a public transportation department gets you, in SF, it's $280,000 a year and in Santa Clara it's $10,000 more a year), some say it's mainly nothing more than your basic, everyday "screw you guys, I'm out of here" move. After all, while the job in Santa Clara ain't gonna be any easier, he won't have to worry about fare hikes causing guerrilla theater performances or city officials leading unruly mobs during budget hearings. more ›

We've crashed the SFMoma Tenth Anniversary. We've crashed an East Bay Rats party. Last Friday, we crashed the nerdiest party ever, and we loved it. Not just because of all the free goodness from Google. But because geeks love nerds, even if we can't understand what the hell they're talking about. more ›